Throughout 2010, the folks at Parasite of the Day have been exploring those hardy stowaways of the animal kindgdom. Now they are counting down the 12 Parasites of Christmas. Each entry offers the opportunity to vote—interesting, cool, funny, or yuck!
Shown, that quintessentially holiday parasite—and subject of December 17th’s Parasite of the Day—mistletoe, in a vintage postcard collected by Cheryl Hicks.
This bird spent several minutes pushing wings and tail under the water.
And then danced on the surface to shake off the rinse.
I had hay fever as a kid, but I don’t remember it being particularly bothersome. My worst experience with allergies was when I acquired a cat allergy in my late 20s—pretty inconvenient. And I figured that dust and cats were going to be it, until pollen came back to haunt me.
I can handle most flowers and grasses now, but trees finally caught up to me. Junipers, so I have the added indignity of having my “hay fever” in the winter.
So I actually felt itchy looking at this gallery, in which the Telegraph offers us the opportunity to “know [the] enemy” through Martin Oeggerli’s scanning electron microscope images. Some of them are even creepier than this one.
More at Oeggerli’s website.
This image was made in a pinhole camera fashioned from a human skull. Pinhole cameras need no moving parts – any chamber that has a minuscule hole and some photographic film facing it can take photos with some detail, and often the results are similarly dreamy.
Skulls, of course, have lots of big holes, and Wayne Martin Belger closed those off and created a new hole for the exposures. The camera that made this photo is called Third Eye.
More about the pinhole skull camera at Inhabitat, and more about Wayne Martin Belger’s cameras at his website, including more about this camera. And more about the history and workings of pinhole cameras.
Design Sponge is a home and product design blog. It features reviews, DIY projects, and city and product guides as well as the expected examples of beautiful stuff. And it demonstrates over and over that a cat elevates a place from a mere dwelling to a home.
Sneak Peek: Best of Cats collects cat-containing classics from Design Sponge’s Sneak Peek category, which takes a look into wonderful living spaces.
… they’re keeping this out.
Taryn Simon shot a set of 1,075 photographs over five days last year for the book and exhibition, ‘‘Contraband.’’ They show items detained or seized from passengers or express mail entering the United States from abroad at the New York airport.
As the crew, which also included a radio operator, a chief engineer and two mechanics, climbed on board, Simon picked up a stray cat that had been living in the America’s hangar. Like many sailors, he was superstitious. ‘We can never have luck without a cat on board,’ he wrote.
More at The Telegraph, and written up at Purr n Fur Famous Felines and Why Evolution Is True.
There was a Heidi Look-Alike Contest at Justin Herman Plaza this afternoon. I’ll upload more pictures tomorrow.
